Cosatu celebrates 40 years of advancing workers' rights amid ongoing economic challenges

COSATU will be celebrating its 40th anniversary on the 6th of December at Dobsonville Stadium, Soweto.

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COSATU will be celebrating its 40th anniversary on the 6th of December at Dobsonville Stadium, Soweto.

(SUPPLIED)

This will be an occasion for workers to celebrate their many hard-won gains since the dark days of apartheid, state brutality and absolute misery. It will be an opportunity to honour the many heroes of workers' struggles from Ray Alexander organising clothing and laundry workers in the 1940s to Oscar Mpetha leading food and canning workers in the 1980s.

Most importantly it is a moment to recharge the labour movement to tackle the many challenges workers face today from 1% economic growth to 42% unemployment rates.

Cosatu, like all other labour formations, has no shortage of armchair critics who argue that unions are a burden to the economy and society, yet they shamefully choose to ignore the many victories Cosatu alongside the broader liberation movement, and progressive civil society and since 1994 under the ANC led government have helped to achieve. These have benefited workers, society, the economy and the state.

First is to appreciate that the ending of apartheid was not by good luck but the combination of mass struggles, of which Cosatu, its affiliates and workers played a leading role, including through strikes in the mining sectors and other key parts of the economy.

It is no accident that two South African Presidents, Kgalema Motlanthe and Cyril Ramaphosa, played leading roles in Cosatu.

Today South Africa is a nonracial and robust constitutional democracy, where the rule of law applies to all, where Parliament and the judiciary hold the state accountable and where today 60% of the budget is invested in uplifting working-class communities.